"If you cannot love yourself first, reaching your goals will be difficult. So, let’s begin with creating your own Hollywood moment.” ‘My First Album’ follows more than ten years in the music scene for Jessica – the title serves as a playful nod to the time she has spent writing for others (such as The Horrors), collaborating, and working on TV soundtracks. “It feels like I’ve experienced a whole lifetime of music,” she reflects on the album’s name. “When it comes to my Jessica Winter project, it’s been about five years, so it serves as a reminder to myself and to anyone interested that this is, in fact, my first album.” Growing up on the South Coast of England, Jessica spent much of her early life alternating between home and the hospital, undergoing regular hip surgeries that required extensive recovery, which concluded when she stopped growing at 16 (it was during her recovery that she took up playing the piano, encouraged by her mother). Her initial experiences with performance started in theatre productions before she relocated from Portsmouth to London and joined punk and metal bands, eventually forming the indie group Pregoblin with Alex Sebley. In 2019, the Jessica Winter project was launched, through which she has already released a remarkable array of bold tracks (including the standout ‘Limerence’ EP in 2023). As she reflects today: “I’ve traversed various genres and styles to arrive here, finally discovering my true self.”
Jessica’s entire, genre-blending musical journey has influenced ‘My First Album’, a project that represents a “shinier” advancement of her solo endeavors thus far, infused with a confidence that has developed over the years. However, she notes that early memories were also significant musical milestones. “I was actually drawing inspiration from the music I first encountered as a child. So, there’s a sense of innocence in the title, and in creating the album, because I was returning to my beginnings.” These beginnings include a childhood filled with the diverse sounds of popular music of the time: Korn, Kylie, Scissor Sisters, Robbie Williams, and a compilation album called ‘Chilled Ibiza’ that she didn't realize others didn’t know about. This was an album she listened to every summer holiday. “There are countless memories linked to school summer holidays, obsessively listening to that album. I didn’t even know who the artists were; I just thought they were random, but later discovered it was Massive Attack and others.”
You can hear these wide-ranging influences throughout the album, from the euphoric, Kylie-inspired synth-pop tracks ‘Aftersun’ and ‘Feels Good (For Tonight)’, to the rock-infused sounds of ‘All I Ever Wanted’ and ‘Got Something Good’, and the full theatrical expression in ‘To Know Her’. There is a sense of nostalgia evoked by these powerful musical memories, which is also reflected in the instrumentation; after a phase of creating music “using a laptop for quite a while”, Jessica made a conscious artistic choice to employ a “warmer and more analogue” approach to enhance the essence of ‘My First Album’.
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After more than ten years of experience in the industry across various roles and genres, Jessica Winter has finally made her long-anticipated solo debut, which encapsulates all her experiences to date.